Turned to Stone (5 page)

5

El Burgo de Osma

The cold air woke him.

Jaime was lying faceup in the dark, and something under him was digging into his back. When he tried to sit up, he realized that what he’d felt were his own hands, tied at the wrists. The darkness was eased only by a vaporous glow from somewhere above, and the only sound came from the whirring fans that dispersed freezing air throughout the chamber. His head hurt, and he felt as if millions of needles were stabbing him all over his body. Gathering his strength, he straightened his back and sat up on the cold floor. The fact that he was alive told him he hadn’t been there long. Fortunately, his captors had left him in all his clothes, including his leather jacket. It occurred to him to scream for help, but the freezer’s insulation immediately absorbed the sound of his choked voice.

Shivering almost unbearably, he dragged himself backward, trying to find an edge sharp enough to cut through the rope wrapped around his wrists. Though his limbs were nearly numb, he could feel that his assailants hadn’t tied the cord too tight—in order to avoid leaving marks, no doubt. Yet it was tight enough to prevent him from untying himself.

As he scooted backward his back hit something hard. Feeling around with his hands, he determined that the object was a wooden crate. He tried to slice the rope by rubbing it against one of the box’s corners, but the edge proved too blunt. As he slid himself along the floor again, something poked his right side, causing a sharp pain. Carefully, he turned and ran his stiff hands over the object, discovering an irregular surface full of razor-sharp projecting parts. The feel was familiar. He’d experienced something similar in his hands and between his teeth on more than one occasion. He gave silent thanks for that bony discovery; the hard vertebrae of a dead animal would be the perfect tool for cutting through rope.

“I don’t know what you were in life,” he said to the unhappy row of bones, “but if I get through this, I promise I’ll go vegetarian.”

Making conversation with a cow’s skeleton wasn’t exactly a sign of sanity, but Jaime knew from experience that talking to whatever was in front of him could help him fight against panic. In the past he had chatted to lamps, spoons, shoes, and even rain—and on all those occasions he’d managed to keep his situation under control.

Once free of his bonds, he started flexing his hands to restore their circulation and soon began to feel a pain that, despite his discomfort, he gladly received. “Welcome back,” he said to them, eager to talk to anything now.

Still using the cow’s ribcage as a saw, he freed his legs from the rope and then tried to stand, but weakness and poor circulation caused his first attempt to fail. Lying on his back, he pumped his legs in the air as if riding a bicycle before trying again, and on his next attempt managed to stand and dodder toward the freezer door. He felt the surface of the door from top to bottom, looking for a way to open it, but he was out of luck. His kidnappers had tampered with the handle and it now hung uselessly from the door.

He felt around in his jacket pocket and scowled when he found that they’d taken his cell phone. “Hey!” he cried out. “Can anyone hear me?”

But he knew no one would hear him calling out. The walls of the freezer were lined with thick sheets of aluminum, rendering useless any attempt he might make to get help from inside.

That was when it hit him that he was completely alone.

No friends or family knew what hotel he was staying at. Even if they did, they’d still have no idea he was in danger. He’d been left to his fate in an icy, hermetically sealed death trap.

Sandra had told him his body would appear three hours later near the castle on the hill. He held his watch closer to the weak light overhead and saw that it was now ten past two. He guessed that they would come to collect his frozen body around four o’clock. As an art history major, Jaime didn’t consider himself a natural scientist, but even he knew he couldn’t survive the cold for two more hours.

As he shivered, he tried to locate a switch to turn off the fans, but either the switch did not exist or it was beyond his reach. He had to find a way to turn off the refrigeration, and he had to do it quickly, before the cold began to paralyze him.

Tracing the current of cold air back to its source, he found an opening that concealed one of the fans. The cavity was located in a corner of the ceiling, three meters up. Drawing upon the little bit of warmth left in his body, he made his way back to the corner where he’d found the wooden crate and discovered an entire tower of them. He stretched to reach the top one, hobbled back to the other side of the freezer with it, and set it down on the floor. By standing on the crate he was able to reach the metal grille that protected the fan. Jaime stuck all his fingers into the holes and pulled with all his strength, but the grille was screwed into the ceiling and wouldn’t budge. He cursed the freezer’s manufacturers and their security measures. What had they feared would happen? That a group of frozen cows would attempt to reenact
The Great Escape
?

He then noticed the dark cables running across the ceiling. These came out of the fan nearest to him and crossed to the other fan, located in the opposite corner of the freezer. If he could destroy the cables, perhaps he could shut down the fans’ motors. Using the cow’s backbone as a lever, he managed to pop out a refrigeration tube and tear out one of the cables at the point where it attached. Then he grabbed the box and put it under the other fan, repeating the process. Once the cables were hanging from the ceiling and the tubes had been split in half, Jaime was relieved to see that the fans had stopped. Exhausted, he threw himself to the floor. Unbelievably, he was sweating. However, the satisfaction of destroying the refrigeration system was fleeting, because it felt to Jaime as though he’d done nothing more than raise the temperature from absolute zero to freezing. The huge quantity of frozen food and the freezer’s effective insulation would soon turn his sweat to frost.

Thinking it might help to have a shelter, he improvised one using the wooden crates. But within five minutes he’d crawled back out from his refuge, knowing that he had to do something to warm up or there’d soon be two stiff carcasses in the freezer. He had to find some way to keep warm until his would-be murderers came to collect his body. When they opened the door he would attempt his escape, but he had to survive another hour and a half of cold first.

Desperate, he looked around again for something he could use to force the door open, but found nothing. The sweat on his chest had become a breastplate of ice. He unbuttoned his shirt and beat himself until the frozen perspiration fell from his body.

Then he remembered a warning that his mother used to give him as a boy: If you sweat and then get cold, you’ll get sick.

Of course! He had found the solution. He looked at the wooden crates, knowing what he was about to do would be tough but that it was his only chance. But he figured he’d been meaning to join a gym, anyway.

At four o’clock in the morning, a white van bearing an egg company’s logo stopped in front of the entrance to Casa Genaro. A man dressed in black climbed out and crossed the pavement as nimbly as a grasshopper. The light from a nearby streetlamp fell on his face, revealing blue eyes over a long nose and a large mustache. As he reached the guesthouse door, he heard one of the van’s windows being lowered and turned back toward it. “Be quick about it,” said the dark-haired woman inside the vehicle. “The sun’s about to come up.”

The man spread his arms and smiled. “Don’t worry! When has your cousin Clark ever failed you?”

The woman snorted. The man strode into the guesthouse humming a tarantella and then headed down the stairs to the kitchen, where just a few hours before he’d whacked that poor unfortunate on the head. His hands turned the wheel on the freezer door and then pulled it toward him. The cloud of freezing air that came from the gap was much smaller than it had been earlier, but he didn’t notice this detail and quickly slipped inside, taking care to prop the door open with a stool.

A strange feeling came over him when he saw that the body was not where they’d left it. In its place there was a strange structure built of broken wooden crates. As he approached he could hear a sobbing sound, accompanied by the chattering of teeth.

It seemed that the wretch was alive, albeit at death’s door.

He peered behind the pile of crates, expecting to find a dying lump of frozen meat, but all he saw was more boxes. The body had to be buried under them. “May I ask what you’re doing? I hope you haven’t injured yourself or broken any bones; the boss will be furious.”

As he began to remove one of the crates, he realized that only the ones forming the outer structure were made of wood. The crates covering the moaning, shivering body were made of polyurethane and were much lighter. “Hey you,” the man with the mustache called out. “Stop playing games and come out of there or I’ll—”

Just then a long object shot out from between the boxes and whistled past his face. Cartons and plastic flew everywhere as his intended victim clambered to his feet, retrieved the object, and tried for a second time to strike him with what looked, unbelievably, like a cow’s backbone.

To Jaime’s dismay, the man with the mustache moved with agility and evaded his second lunge as easily as he had the first. Before he could attack once more, he felt the vertebrae cut into his hand as the improvised weapon was violently snatched from him.

“You’re clever, kid,” said the man. “Very clever. But you have no idea who you’re messing with.”

Jaime knew that in his weakened state he was no match for this dockyard goon, and he had no desire to hang around and get beaten to a pulp. He ran toward the freezer door, but the man struck him on the leg with the backbone, throwing him to the floor.

“Hey! What did I tell you? Come on, get up from there.”

Jaime rolled over and saw the man advancing toward him with the bony club held high above his head.

“I wasn’t supposed to hit you,” the man said, “but now you’re really pissing me off.”

As the cow spine traced an arc through the air, Jaime rolled his body away to evade the blow. As he stood up, he found himself at the end of the freezer opposite the door, near some shelves with boxes on them. Knowing that the thug was between him and the door, he decided to escape upward. He jumped to his feet and started to climb, moving himself beyond the reach of the man, who was now laughing heartily.

“Go on, keep climbing. The higher you go the harder you’ll fall.”

Jaime crouched at the top of the shelves as the man moved toward him.

“Ready to come down?” Grinning, the thug grabbed the shelving with both hands and pulled until he’d torn it from the wall. As he looked up, he expected to see the terrified face of his victim.

But what he saw was a box full of ice bags flying toward him like a meteorite and then smashing into his face.

The man crashed to the floor, his septum shattered, blood gushing from his nostrils.

Jaime jumped down from the shaky shelving and grimaced at the sight of the man lying faceup on the ground. He assumed this must be the person who’d delivered the blow to his head earlier, when he’d been aiming the gun at Sandra. He was about to run out of the freezer when he glimpsed a metal object protruding from his assailant’s belt. Jaime bent down and grabbed the automatic pistol. When he stood and turned, he found himself face-to-face with Sandra, who was staring at him in disbelief.

“You!”

“Yup, me.”

She looked thoroughly confused. She’d undoubtedly expected to find a dead body. Instead, Jaime was very much alive. He was not frozen, although he was weary, his breathing was agitated, and his brow dripped with sweat as if he’d just run a five-thousand meter race.

“How . . . ?” she stammered. She had exchanged her black dress for camouflage pants and a fleece jacket, but despite her change of attire and shocked expression, Jaime thought she still looked dazzling. “It’s impossible!”

“Nothing’s impossible,” he said, pointing the gun to direct her out of the kitchen.

The sun had yet to rise when Jaime, standing outside on the sidewalk, noticed the white van parked in front of the hotel entrance, its engine still running. He pushed Sandra inside and climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Where are we going?” Sandra asked as he put the vehicle in gear and drove toward the center of town.

Jaime waited a few seconds before responding. He hadn’t bothered to tie her up, assuming she wouldn’t dare do anything stupid while the van was in motion. He glanced over and saw her gripping the seat, her knuckles white and eyes wide open.

“Where are we going, you ask?” Jaime didn’t know the answer to the question himself. Then it came to him. It was a crazy idea, but there could be no better way to accomplish what he intended. “How about we stick to the plan?”

“The plan? What plan?”

“Your plan. Hold on tight. Next stop, Osma Castle.” A triumphant smile spread across his face. “I’ll just need to make one small change. It turns out that the person who will be found dead won’t be a homeless man. It’ll be a homeless woman.”